Chapter Seventeen Will
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WILL
I don’t believe in fate
C HARLOTTE HAS FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO SCIENCE .
No joke. This woman, who for the last couple of weeks has taken the lead on every project, now stares at me like she doesn’t understand the difference between green and red.
We’ve been monitoring cell proliferation in our hydrogel matrix experiment. It’s Day 3, and I’m using a fluorescence microscope to examine the stained cells from today’s sample. Live cells are a shiny green, dead ones red.
Yet as I recite the results that Charlotte is supposed to be jotting down in her notebook, I notice she’s clearly writing down the wrong shit.
“Put down the pencil,” I command.
“Huh?”
“You’re not even listening to me. That’s not the right cell distribution.”
She glances down at what she wrote. “Oh, you’re right. Seems like uneven distribution. Maybe there was inconsistent staining?”
“Or maybe you’re distracted and writing down the wrong results. You keep writing down red whenever I say green.”
“No I’m not.”
I lean over and take the pencil out of her hand. “You’re temporarily benched. Now tell me what’s wrong so we can talk it out and then go back to our work.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
A female voice interrupts my grilling. “Will. Hey.”
I swivel on my chair to greet my former lab partner. “Hey, Lourdes.”
“I just wanted to make sure you got the, um, thing I sent you.” Her gaze darts toward Charlotte, but my new partner isn’t paying attention.
Charlotte has her eye glued to the microscope now. Yeah, something is definitely up with her today.
“I mean, the chapter.” Lourdes is pretty much whispering now. “You didn’t email back.”
“I’m still reading it,” I assure her. “I should be done tonight.”
She tucks her chin-length hair behind her ears and gives me a smile of gratitude. “Thanks. I really, really appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
Lourdes flounces back to George, and I wait until she’s out of earshot before turning to grin at Charlotte. My humor fades when I notice her stiff posture. And she’s avoiding my gaze.
“Okay, seriously, what’s bothering you?” I press. “Because the Charlotte I’ve been working with this month would’ve been all over that Lourdes conversation demanding to read the latest fanfic chapter. Are you having trouble in your other classes? Fighting with your friends?”
“My friends all love me.”
A laugh slips out. “Okay. Family problems?”
“No. Let’s get back to work.”
“No. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I don’t have to tell you what’s wrong.”
I pounce. “So there is something wrong.”
She finally allows her gaze to meet mine. Then proceeds to stare at me for so long, I shift in my chair. I can’t look away, though. Her eyes are magnetic. A deep brown, like melted dark chocolate. And her skin looks so soft to the touch. I wonder if her hair is soft too. She always wears it in a bun when we’re in the lab, secured by a white hairpin, with long black wisps framing her face. My gaze travels to her mouth. She has great lips. Pale pink and pouty.
“You’re staring,” she accuses.
“You were staring first.” I grin at her. “I thought that meant it was cool for me to do it too.” When she starts to turn toward the microscope, I reach out and touch her arm. My voice becomes gruff. “Hey. Did I do something to piss you off or to annoy you? Because I was kind of digging this partnership, but if you want to switch lab partners—”
“No,” Charlotte interjects, eyes widening. “I don’t want to switch. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
She falls silent again, glancing toward our TA’s workstation. Monica has her head buried in the stack of papers she’s been grading all afternoon.
Charlotte leans over her chair and slips her hand into the navy-blue canvas bag at her feet. She emerges with her phone, one dainty finger touching the screen. Finally, she slides the phone across the table, and I find myself looking at a picture of myself and Beckett, taken at a pool party at Shane’s place this summer.
“I don’t get it. I’m friends with Beckett? That’s the problem?” I smother a groan. “Did he say something to you? He’s a huge flirt, but I swear he’s harmless.”
She taps the screen with a polished fingernail. “How did I get this picture, Will?”
My brow furrows. What the hell is she—
Oh shit.
Understanding strikes like a bolt of lightning.
“Yeah,” Charlotte says, noting my expression.
She makes the picture disappear, leaving only the chat thread where it came from. The profile name at the top is impossible to miss.
LARS & B
Charlotte locks her gaze on mine again. “I’m Charlie,” she says, sounding so miserable I almost laugh.
My shock, though, eclipses the humor.
This must be a joke. Charlie, the sexy free spirit who fantasizes about getting drilled by two guys on the hood of a car— that’s Charlotte Kingston, the girl I’ve been sitting next to in the lab? The girl in pleated sorority-girl skirts and matching sweaters, whose makeup is never smudged and who never has a single hair out of place?
I’m stunned speechless. And while I sit there trying to make sense of this, she snatches the phone back and closes the chat.
Closes it…but doesn’t delete it.
I find that interesting.
“Will…” She bites her lip. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Please.”
“Tell them what? That you were trying to arrange a threesome?”
“I wasn’t trying—” She lowers her voice when we draw the attention of a few other classmates. “ You were the one trying to arrange it.”
“You were into it.” I shake my head in amusement. “Well, shit. This is great.”
“This is not great,” she hisses. “It’s mortifying.”
“Or…” I slant my head at her. “Was it meant to be?”
“Meant to be?”
“Yeah, like fate.”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“Really. So. For six weeks, you and I have been working with other lab partners and never exchanged one word with each other. Then we unknowingly match on the app mere days before our partners write a Romeo and Juliet letter demanding they be paired together. And now I’m your lab partner, and it turns out you’re the one I matched with and who Beckett and I are obsessed with.”
She blinks. “Obsessed?”
“Yes. Goddamn. We’ve been dying to meet you.”
Wariness creeps into her expression. “Why?”
“Because you’re awesome.” I lean closer to whisper in her ear. “And you’re hot as fuck.”
I don’t miss the way she shivers.
“You have no idea how many times we’ve jerked off to you.”
Her head snaps up, gaze finding mine. “Like, together?”
I chuckle. “No, separately. We don’t chat with you at the same time.”
“How does it work then?”
“Kingston, Larsen!” Monica chides from her table. “Less talk, more work.”
We busy ourselves with our results again, only the roles are now reversed. Charlotte is diligently recording everything, while I can’t focus on a damn thing.
“Charlotte,” I murmur. “Come on. Talk to me.”
Her body language conveys pure reluctance as she brings her gaze back to mine. “You still haven’t promised you won’t tell anyone we’ve been chatting.”
“I won’t. I promise. But…what about that drink?”
The invitation Beck and I proposed on the app hangs between us. Dangling like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.
I want her to take a bite. A big fucking bite.
But she simply shakes her head. “We’re not having drinks. I don’t even like your stupid friend.”
“Beck’s not stupid.” I grin.
“He annoys me.”
“You didn’t seem annoyed when you guys were chatting about him unwrapping you like a present.”
Her cheeks turn bright red. This girl cannot disguise a blush to save her life. I almost feel bad for her, except I don’t because it helps me read her. She’s trying hard not to show me how tempted she is. How badly she wants to see this thing through. But I can see it in the way she bites her plump bottom lip. In the way her pulse hammers at the base of her throat.
But she’s out of reach now. For the remaining twenty minutes of class, she goes out of her way to keep it professional. Focus on the cell samples. Record the results. No chitchat. And absolutely no eye contact. Charlotte—Charlie—has determined that eye contact is too dangerous.
When class ends, she gathers her stuff so fast, I barely have time to blink. I race to catch up to her in the busy hallway where I pull her toward the wall to let a group of people pass.
“C’mon, Charlie,” I say in a low voice. “You want this. You wanted to meet us.”
She’s quick to deny it. “No. I didn’t. It was just chatting, okay?”
“You asked for face pics. You said you needed that before you agreed to meet.”
“Exactly.” She gives me a pointed look. “I never agreed to meet. I only asked for the pics because I was curious. I never planned on following through.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“Why are you fighting it so hard?” Frustration tightens my chest as I stare at her for a moment. “You don’t seem anything like the girl from this app.” I hold up my own phone as if to punctuate that. “Where is this girl?”
“She doesn’t exist, Will. I was playing a part.”
“Were you?”
“ Yes .”
Her vehemence gives me pause. I know better than anyone what it’s like to play a role. To be two people. I plaster on my bland, politician’s son smile for my dad’s constituents on the campaign trail. To my friends, I let them see my easygoing-with-a-side-of-sarcastic-quips side. But very few people are privy to a deeper look. Case, sometimes, but these days, it’s mostly Beckett. He sees the intensity I like to keep under wraps. He hears the thoughts and fantasies I’ve never shared with anybody else.
I wonder what parts of Charlotte Kingston are real and what parts are the act. She’s either the good-girl A student in the sweater sets, or she’s the sexy risk-taker who can make me laugh just as much as she turns me on. But I don’t think she’s both.
“Are you going to tell Beckett?” she asks, looking unhappy at the notion.
I nod. “Of course.”
“Do you have to?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s his account too. And I don’t keep secrets from my roommate.”
“Your roommate.”
“Roommate. Teammate. Best friend. Whatever you want to call it. I promise he won’t say anything, though.”
“Really? Because I know all about athletes and their locker room talk.”
“ Some athletes. Not us. It’s nobody’s business what we do. Don’t get me wrong, people talk about us sometimes. But I promise they won’t talk about you.”
“Thank you,” she says, and my frustration returns when I realize this conversation isn’t going at all as I’d hoped.
“You’re really not going to see this through?” I ask her.
After a beat, she shakes her head, eliciting a deep pang of disappointment. “I can’t, Will. It’s just…not me.”